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I want to muck about with the Earth...

I'm working on an alternate Earth that has higher sea levels, asteroid impact sites, and other assorted erosion and whatnot. I tried Fractal Terrains demo Fractal World Explorer, but it didn't really give me the level of control that I wanted. Should I take some GIS classes, or is there existing software out there that allows you to manipulate real-world data? Thanks.

Edit: Turns out what I had tried was Fractal World Explorer- Fractal Terrains may be exactly what I need. My question still stands: Is there any other software out there that could do this sort of thing, short of a full-on GIS suite?

Ideally, I'd like to be able to mess around with elevation, sea levels, and vegetation density, and render images from space level down to ~300 km areas or so. I'd also like it to make my coffee in the morning, if that's not to much to ask.